Every year I try to set up a small “holiday gaming café” in my apartment, where I invite friends over to board and card games. While the party was understandably canceled last year, this year I invited a small group and we got tabletop titles like We’re Doomed and. granted Parks. Inevitably, we got to the point where people’s attention was wandering that evening, and switching to party video games seemed like a good idea. But instead of the old standby jackboxI remembered that Oink games had just released a board game collection and decided to give it a try.
We discovered that Let’s play! Oink games wasn’t like Jackbox Party Packs at all as it didn’t work with phones and required separate copies of the game on separate consoles. Exist. So we turned off the switch, plugged in my laptop, and started up Jackbox party package 8 instead of this.
If you live in a cave with no friends and don’t know Jackbox, it’s a pretty great series: each “Party Pack” contains five party games that anyone can participate in using their phone (or any web browser) by going to Jackbox.tv go and enter the special room code. The narrator explains how to play and leads the group through each round – which makes it pretty good for those guests who are not careful or are super, super drunk. Most games involve drawing, trivia, or writing silly words. (My particular favorite is ‘Mad Verse City’ from Jackbox Party Pack 5, a rap game.)
After everyone left, I decided to do Let’s Play! Oink Games one more try. And while it’s not an alternative to Jackbox (it’s more like Clubhouse gamesif anything) it’s still a bit of a fun experience, but not worth the $ 22 I spent.
There are only four games in the set: Startups, Deep Sea Adventure, A Fake Artist Goes to New York and Moon Adventure. They are all computerized versions of Oinks tabletop games that come in small card-sized boxes and typically cost $ 20 each. In that regard, the video game version seems like good business. You can choose to play online with friends or strangers, offline with friends, or offline with CPU opponents.
Oink games
Going offline with friends wasn’t possible because, as I mentioned earlier, you will all need your own copy of the game and a console. I tried to find an online match only to find it didn’t exist. So my only choice was offline with CPU opponents.
Unfortunately, A Fake Artist Goes to New York cannot be played with CPU opponents as it is a drawing game where all but one of the players are prompted and you have to find out who the “fake” artist is. I also found that Moon Adventure can have multiple players, but the user has to play them all as it is a cooperative game. So it really is a struggle with resource management trying to gather supplies before you run out of oxygen. I found this game the hardest, even after watching the helpful instructions and videos that the game is built into. For all of my concerns with the title, the guide is really well made.
